It's a wet Saturday evening in January, and a staff of six is opening 285 Kent. The air in the cavernous warehouse is pungent: with stale cigarette smoke, despite the sign that reads "NO SMOKING — THANK U!" in the entryway; with bleach, as a tall kid in a hoodie mixes cleaning solution in a mop bucket; with spices, as a young woman in a flowing shawl carries a lit stick of incense like a wand back and forth between the bar and the front door; and finally with chemicals—to hide unsightly rust on the plumbing in the bathroom, the bar manager is spray-painting the pipes black. Later on, two brand-new seats arrive to replace the venue's notoriously repulsive toilets.

Meanwhile, R&B act Autre Ne Veut is sound-checking as Ric Leichtung, 285's booker and manager, finalizes the night's guest list in the "office"—a narrow room made of three freestanding walls and a screen door that house an aging fridge, a vinyl seat bench ripped out of a passenger van, and a vanity mirror covered in graffiti.

The routine could easily be any shift at the more than 400 shows put on at the Williamsburg waterfront space over the last few years, but tonight will be different, because it's the beginning of 285 Kent's end. As of January 20, after four final concerts—a two-weekend send-off featuring some of the scene's most integral artists—one of the most influential Brooklyn DIY spaces of the past 10 years will be a memory. Its founder, Todd Patrick, aka Todd P, will relinquish the lease in August, and in all likelihood, its owners will be courted by the same type of local developers that are turning the historic Domino Sugar refinery across the street into high-rise condos.

As little as eight years ago, however, there was nothing to celebrate or mourn at all. Before it was 285 Kent, before its monochromatic murals and deafening PA and legendary bathrooms, it was an empty warehouse, one that only began its eventual transformation into the welcome center of Brooklyn DIY thanks to Lou Reed.

In 2006, Reed had an office in SoHo when his young assistant and studio manager at the time, Zeljko McMullen, suggested a cheaper option: a Williamsburg space where Reed could store his gear and occasionally drop in for jam sessions, and McMullen and his musician friends could live and create on the cheap. Intrigued, Reed obliged, and McMullen found an empty warehouse on Kent Avenue, formerly used as storage facilities by the nearby Domino Sugar refinery.

However, Reed's management was against the idea, and at the last minute, the NYC icon pulled out of the endeavor, suggesting McMullen take the space for his own purposes. The two parted ways professionally—Reed's severance pay taking care of the deposit—and McMullen founded ParisLondonNewYorkWestNile, a live-in collective that, for three years, housed anywhere from five to nine working musicians and artists in self-constructed bedrooms and studios, and held frequent (and free) performances in its common room.

"It was incredibly chaotic, but also magical," says Cammisa Buerhaus, a performance artist who lived in and filmed a documentary about ParisLondonNewYorkWestNile in its final year. "Everyone was very dedicated to what they were working on and damn good at it."

But as with any cooperative artist space, after four years, inherent problems came to the fore. "[The landlords] wanted to almost double our rent, and we were behind a little bit, and we owed on electricity," says McMullen. "As the space got wilder, people had less and less money. At the time, I was tired of playing den mom to a bunch of artists."

"285 is important because it wasn't just the playground of one class," says influential DIY organizer Todd Patrick, sitting in his home office in Ridgewood, Queens, on a frigid recent Tuesday, days before the final shows commence. "That was a unique thing about that space. We went after electronic and hip-hop, particularly with DJs, who were making music when divisions between genres were dissolving."

He says events like #TOP8, a monthly all-ages dance party that frequently attracted a teen crowd, as well as one-off events with local staples like ball culture collective House of Ladosha, were booked specifically to diversify the crowd in what would ordinarily be a heavily gentrified twenty-something scene. "It was the only [DIY venue] that attracted people who weren’t necessarily white, and who weren’t necessarily straight," says Patrick.

"Oh my god, it was super important for me!" gender-bending Harlem rapper Mykki Blanco exclaims from New Orleans, where she's just arrived to work on her next album. Since 2012, she's performed on the 285 stage four times. "It was at that space, more than any other space in New York City, where I had kids from the suburbs come in and say, 'We really like your music. Keep going. Fuck the haters.' It was at that space that I started to have people way outside of the New York scene come to the shows."

One of the things that really differentiated it from other spaces was debauchery—you could actually get laid at 285 Kent.

In August 2010, after the owners had knocked down ParisLondon's makeshift walls, came John Barclay, a local electronic booker who rented the space as a photography studio. Unofficially, however, he began throwing word-of-mouth raves almost immediately, calling it Bohemian Grove, after the top-secret billionaire boys club in California. The set-up lasted until December, when the local vice squad raided and shut down an event and arrested a handful of its organizers. The official charges and fees, according to Barclay, were later dismissed in court, but by that point, he and his contemporaries had wearied of the space's administrative burdens. "We weren't making real money off it," says Barclay, who went on to open legitimate Bushwick bar Bossa Nova Civic Club in 2012. "It was supposed to be a fun, hobby sort of thing." In January 2011, he offered the lease to Patrick.

"I had kind of been out of the game," says Patrick, who had previously booked shows at Death By Audio and Glass House, two nearby venues technically housed in the same building complex. "I wasn’t sure if I wanted to do the warehouse thing again, because I’d done that, and it was a lot of work with a lot of risk and worry. But then a couple of the smaller spaces I had been working with were about to close, and people had been hitting me up to do shows again, and [Barclay] was just giving me the lease."

The address that had been circulated throughout Barclay's scene to alert electronic underground fans to the next rave turned into the venue's simple, official name: 285 Kent.

Still, running the space was a massive job, and Patrick and his partner had recently had a baby. He asked local underground booker John "Rambo" Jacobson, along with Kunal Gupta and Syed Salahuddin, cofounders of video game collective Babycastles, to assist in booking and running the venue; with Patrick's management, Jacobson and Babycastles booked and ran events at 285 through the first half of 2011. But by the end of that summer, the Babycastles partnership had fizzled out, so Patrick and Jacobson recruited Ric Leichtung, another DIY promoter and former intern of Patrick's who, at the time, was helming soon-to-be-shuttered Pitchfork sister site Altered Zones while simultaneously developing a new site, Ad Hoc—both focused on some of the very music that Jacobson and Patrick were hoping would define 285 Kent.

Leichtung started to help book and run shows in October 2011 and subsequently assumed more and more responsibility at the venue, eventually hiring staffers to manage daily operations. By July 2012, Jacobson had left the venue, and 285 Kent was being booked and organized almost entirely by Leichtung and a handful of young employees, with Patrick taking a lesser role.

"When I signed on, I didn’t really realize that I was taking on an entire new job and lifestyle," says Leichtung, who frequently pulls 20-hour days running Ad Hoc and 285 Kent simultaneously. "For a while, I did everything myself. No one helped me do promotions; my schedule was insane. I had no personal life. I smelled terrible. I felt terrible."

But the work paid off. From April 2012 on, 285 Kent rapidly gained traction thanks to its diverse booking schedule and Leichtung's industry acumen. The 350-capacity space sold out frequently, with publications including The New York Times and The New Yorker regularly reporting on its events. Touring acts—most notably Odd Future, who infamously crashed Trash Talk's July 2012 show—began making additional pit stops at 285 when they came to the city to play established Manhattan venues like Terminal 5 and Bowery Ballroom.

"Last time we were in New York, we played Irving Plaza and 285 Kent," says garage-rock lifer John Dwyer of Thee Oh Sees, "and Irving Plaza was probably one of the worst experiences I've had playing a show in New York ever. But then you go do something at 285 Kent—which has no overhead, keeps a low profile, and is very simple—and everything goes smooth as silk. Even if you move on stage and your amp comes unplugged because everything is sort of handmade, you can never beat that."

That controlled-chaos aesthetic made for a venue with an unparalleled personality. Acts from all across the musical spectrum—hyperactive hip-hop producer AraabMuzik, jangling guitar band Beach Fossils, futuristic beat maker Arca, electronic pop master Grimes, Tumblr rapper Kitty, epic metal act Deafheaven, composer and lutenist Jozef Van Wissem, R&B showstopper Blood Orange—played 285 as they gained popularity; it was a place where some of the city's best local artists cut their teeth (and, likely, some skin), where touring artists found a more flexible way to play to a receptive New York audience, one that smoked cigarettes as they perched on ripped-up couches against the walls, or moshed front-center with terrifying abandon. Of course, it developed a dedicated group of regulars: If you went to 285 Kent once, you could probably show up solo next time and find someone you knew.

"One of the things that really differentiated it from other spaces was debauchery," says Patrick. "You could actually get laid at 285 Kent. People have a desire to be in a place that has some darkness to it, but a lot of [other DIY spaces] are like, 'We don’t want to be seen as a threat.' But I’m like, 'Fuck that.' I don’t want to be in place where I don’t feel threatened. That shit is boring. You don’t build community; community builds itself. It was just a matter of letting people feel that it’s a place that’s wild without actually putting anyone in danger."

Meanwhile, operations on the business end were run like any traditional venue. Security was hired to monitor the door and sidewalk, IDs were checked, outside alcohol forbidden, and, Leichtung says, they "had a pretty low tolerance for drugs." Unlike most DIY spaces, playing 285 Kent also meant that bands signed contracts and made decent take-homes. Out-of-town acts like DJ Rashad, Merchandise, and Alan Howarth would often be flown in on the house's dime.

"285 Kent is special because it feels like a warehouse, but it’s run like something more," says Leichtung. "There’s a sense of freedom that you don’t get in other places."

Even so, a DIY venue is a DIY venue, and the arrival of the rambunctious, all-ages 285 wasn't a boon for everyone. Next door, Glasslands, the 21+ venue co-founders Brooke Baxter Bailey and Rolyn Hu opened in 2006, had spent the past five years aggressively pursuing legitimacy, obtaining liquor licenses, hosting after-school art workshops with at-risk community kids, and playing nice with the local police.

"When I found out that Todd was taking the space directly next to me, we were kind of like, 'Um, this is going to be a problem,'" says Bailey. "Todd assured me that he was doing more of an art gallery space, and they weren’t going to do too many shows, but we just kind of knew what it was going to be."

She wasn't necessarily wrong: Over the past three years, mistaking one venue for the other has become a rite-of-passage joke among patrons, and smokers stepping out of both places frequently intermingle in the street, a development, Bailey says, that often caused police to accuse Glasslands of holding all-ages shows.

Sometimes it was worse. According to the NYPD, officially-filed reports of crimes against 285 Kent increased: There was just one in 2011, then three in 2012, and four in 2013. In September, police shut down the venue entirely during a Pictureplane show, and last month, at a Maria Minerva show that was originally rumored to be the venue's last event, the health inspector showed up.

Still, Patrick and Leichtung say they kept the place as up-to-code as much as financially possible, making sure sprinkler systems and exit signs were in working order, reattaching doors to swing outward to comply with fire safety regulations, and obtaining temporary licenses and a certificate of occupancy for the space. And over the course of its tenure, the number of times police actually responded to 285 Kent decreased by almost half, from seven in 2011 to just four in 2013.

"We don’t get off on not being up to code," says Leichtung. "It’s not our mission to create this slum venue where we’re just trying to get as much money and people there as we can. We want to be safe; we want to sell legally. We wanted all these things, but we just didn't have the resources."

In 2011, Glasslands was turned over to Rami Haykal and Jake Rosenthal, the founders of local DIY booking agency Popgun. The problems between the venues didn't disappear, of course, but the new owners say that their neighbors' end is far from a cause for celebration.

"I don't think anyone who helped build Glasslands in 2006 imagined the neighborhood would go through the changes it's now gone through," says Rosenthal. "In a lot of the discussions around 285 closing, I see people saying that Glasslands is next—no shit, eventually."

"If you really believe in doing things in the DIY spirit, you understand that there's a certain pointlessness in getting too caught up with addresses," agrees Haykal. "The people who made 285 what it was aren't dead; they'll keep doing what they do. That space could have been an office, or industrial storage, or a clothing store. It was 285 because a group of people willed it into existence. That's what gives venues character: the people who build them and the choices they make."

In the end, the closing of 285 Kent isn't a decision based in legalities or relationships with the neighbors. (In fact, few, if any, Brooklyn DIY venues have ever died directly at the hands of the police or the health department; the cause is almost always financial, or stems from disagreements with landlords.) The space could feasibly have continued, and eventually even gained legitimacy with a liquor license and up-to-code bathrooms. In fact, before the team made the decision to close, Patrick hired an architect to draw up renovation plans, complete with wheelchair accessibility, additional soundproofing, a permanent bar and artist green room, and three times more restrooms.

But there's only so much one can do to legitimize a space without a decent sum of cash—and time. Not only would renovations cost an estimated $100,000 (both Patrick and Leichtung have opted not to seek investors, in favor of creative independence), but the building lease will be up at the beginning of August, and the owners have delayed the renewal conversation, a move that, to Patrick, signifies that they will likely decline to re-up. With the venue's public profile gaining traction, and with no guarantee of continued occupancy (or that any renovation plans would sway the decision), Patrick and Leichtung decided to close voluntarily—a first for both organizers.

"We would love to make the space work, but it would be foolish of us to spend that money for such a short period of time," says Patrick. "[Renovation and licensing] take a long time in this city, and if you then lose your lease, you are throwing all that money away. We wanted to do this on our own terms, because a place like this never goes out on its own terms."

"We didn’t have the money to legalize, and really, we were outgrowing it anyway," adds Leichtung. "Shows were getting bigger; in the last few months we were consistently getting four to five thousand people in and out of the venue in 30 days. That’s a lot of people. When you have an operation that’s so delicate, it’s incredibly difficult to sustain. We have worked too hard for too little to just get kicked on our asses."

Since the closing announcement was made earlier this month, a deluge of 285 stalwarts have publicly lamented across publications and social media, while others have expressed confusion at such widespread concern. After all, it's not the oldest DIY venue in the area; Death by Audio has been hosting concerts around the corner consistently since 2007. Bigger spaces have existed, too. And while 285 Kent was a beacon of underground culture, the Williamsburg in which it began its tenure wasn't exactly a broke artist's Mecca. There was little, statistically speaking, that distinguished 285 Kent from its peers. What gave it its reputation—and its mourners—comes down to something less quantifiable.

"285 came to Kent Avenue at a time when the huge changes were already underway, so it wasn’t a holdover from the 'old Brooklyn,'" says author and rock critic (and 285 frequenter) Rob Sheffield, referring to Williamsburg's endless condo-ization. "But the fact that it was a trustworthy space that was around from week to week and had a lot of different shows was [why] people tended to get attached to 285 emotionally. It had the vibe of being some sort of indestructible room where no one was afraid they were going to break something."

Timing helped too: While others may have been older, 285 flourished at a time when the larger music world was paying more attention to the concept of DIY. "285 Kent was essential to getting new, uninitiated people involved and aware of the DIY scene," says Leichtung. "The gap between DIY and the music industry is closing, and we definitely took advantage of it. It enabled us to do bigger things and pair large, successful bands with unknown bands we felt were deserving to play with them."

285 Kent is special because it feels like a warehouse, but it’s run like something more. There’s a sense of freedom that you don’t get in other places.

In December, Patrick soft-opened Trans Pecos, an up-to-code new venue at 915 Wyckoff Avenue in Bushwick, the address that used to house Silent Barn, another DIY venue that closed in 2011 and recently reopened in another space nearby; right before we met, he was overseeing construction on the imminent reopening of yet another Brooklyn show space, Market Hotel. Leichtung is already booking shows at spaces around town, like new bar Baby's All Right. 285 might be a memory, but the forces that made it work are still in play.

"It's a fucking shame, but I think it's par for the course," says John Dwyer. "Nothing gold can stay, but that whole group of people are contributors, so they'll all be back. They're like weed. They'll grow anywhere."